Podcast With Brian Kato

Why Most SEO Agencies Fail: Learn Critical Brand Building Techniques with Brian Kato

Show Notes

Discover why most SEO agencies fail and uncover critical brand-building secrets for 2025! In this eye-opening interview, Brian Kato shares game-changing insights on scaling your digital marketing agency and dominating search rankings. Learn how to:

• Build a powerful brand that Google trusts
• Leverage AI and automation to boost productivity
• Create content that attracts high-quality backlinks
• Implement advanced link-building strategies that work
• Set realistic client expectations for better retention

Whether you're just starting out or looking to take your agency to the next level, this video is packed with actionable tips to help you stand out in a crowded market. Don't miss Brian's unique perspective on EAT factors, CTR manipulation, and the future of SEO.

Ready to transform your agency and crush your competition? Watch now and discover the secrets to long-term success in the ever-changing world of digital marketing.

Chapters:

00:00 - Intro

00:37 - Musician to SEO Expert Journey

03:08 - Inspiration Behind Fusion Vine

05:00 - Initial Challenges of Fusion Vine

06:31 - Importance of Testing in SEO

09:33 - Conducting SEO Testing Methods

11:22 - Challenges in SEO Strategy Testing

12:38 - Building Brand Authority with Google

15:42 - Insights from Recent SEO Tests

18:07 - Adapting to Google Algorithm Updates

18:58 - Advantages of SEO Process Automation

21:40 - Role of Automation in SEO

22:15 - Impact of AI on SEO

24:40 - Effective Link Building Strategies

27:30 - EAT Factor in SEO Practices

30:29 - Click-Through Rate Manipulation

33:10 - Current SEO Trends and Challenges

38:30 - Generating Leads for Your Agency

41:06 - Scaling a Small Digital Marketing Agency

48:05 - In-House SEO vs Outsourcing Services

49:58 - Client Attraction and Retention Strategies

50:38 - Differentiating Agencies in a Crowded Market

52:35 - Starting Out in SEO with Limited Resources

57:38 - Future Direction of SEO and Digital Marketing

59:10 - Where to Find Brian Kato Online

1:00:03 - Outro

Transcript

Intro

0:00 welcome to the agency Insider podcast I am navnit kosel and today we have an exciting guest Brian kto the founder of

0:07 fusion wine and an expert in SEO Brian has been transforming The Way businesses

0:12 approaches digital marketing with his Innovative strategies we are thrilled to dive into his journey insights on SEO

0:18 and the future of digital marketing [Applause]

0:29 [Music] welcome Brian hey thank you for having

0:35 me on your podcast let's start with your journey you began in web development and even

Musician to SEO Expert Journey

0:40 had a stint as a musician before diving into Su can you tell us about that transition and what actually drove you

0:48 to the SEO yeah so I was in I was doing music and was actually a touring musician for

0:54 about 15 years we were signed to an independent record label for a little while but did a lot of stuff on like

1:00 boots on the ground you know living in a van with other individuals and touring around for weeks on end but the big

1:07 thing that I I learned from that was uh number one like you know we had to do all of our own marketing material

1:13 obviously in the entertainment industry it's it's a little bit brutal you've got to be very you know uh very sharp and

1:20 very um focused on what you're doing um I also got into a lot of guerilla marketing strategies so I've been asked

1:27 like what are what is that and so one of the things that we uh we had done was uh before a lot of shows we would go out

1:33 and we would kind of mingle with the crowd you know before doors at venue would open we' actually go out and and

1:39 it was like hi my name is Brian I'm the singer from such and such Band by the way you know here listen to this iPod

1:45 here's us you know on you know on Spotify here's us on you know different mu music channels by the way we're

1:51 opening and so we got very boots like very Innovative with some of our strategies more so than just you know

1:59 come like our page right we we got to be very we had to be very strategic in our

2:04 approach so I did that for about 15 years got into web development and actually gone to college for business

2:10 administration and from there found out that I'm really good at like database design again that really lends itself

2:16 also to frontend back the backend development and then having a front end aesthetic with obviously designing

2:23 Flyers things like that for music so kind of full stack if you will and then yeah after I had my son it was kind of a

2:31 well I don't want to be touring around for four to six weeks on end away from my family and so kind of stepped away

2:37 from music at least the touring component of that and I really dove into kind of web design I was a manager for

2:43 um a granite company for a while and then got brought in as the as a project

2:48 manager and it morphed into a or a project manager for a marketing company then that kind of morphed into being the

2:55 head of SEO head of paid search at the same time so I'm wearing like three hats all at the same time and I did that for

3:02 about just under five years before I started my own agency and here we are today wow that's quite a different uh

Inspiration Behind Fusion Vine

3:10 Journey than I usually hear with my guests H right right right now uh and

3:16 what inspired you to start Fusion wine and honestly what does Fusion wine

3:23 means so yeah Fusion Vine was just it was a name that I came up with just uh

3:28 you know we we combine a lot of different elements when it comes to digital marketing again kind of taking

3:33 that guerilla marketing approach we we do a lot of things that you might consider more aggressive or potentially

3:40 Fringe or things like that but we also you know combine different elements I mean you've got a as the marketing

3:46 industry is today you have to be able to combine uh you know content you have to

3:52 be able to integrate you know link building be Innovative capture your audience you've got to consider things

3:58 like cro conversion all of these things like that and I think long gone are the way the the days

4:05 of like just being an agency that focuses on like just one vertical or

4:11 just one thing in a lot of ways SEO has kind of gotten to the point where unless

4:16 you're able to Captivate the audience and unless you're able to bring them in and be a solution for them unless you're

4:22 super niched down and boutique with it SEO in general is kind of becoming a little bit of a commodity and so that's

4:29 why in general like we actually don't sell SEO per se it's a tool in our

4:34 toolbox that we will leverage but we do a lot of these other things like brand

4:40 building strategic design brand voice sometimes PR we've even done things like

4:45 physical like billboard signs things like that so it goes beyond just we're a

4:51 digital marketing company or we we do one thing we actually help build

4:57 Brands and so so I'm sure there would have been some uh initial challenges so

Initial Challenges of Fusion Vine

5:03 I mean can you tell us about the transition and the initial challenges you faed when you founded Fusion wine

5:10 yeah so I think the biggest thing for a lot of and especially for a lot of entrepreneurs the biggest challenge is

5:15 going to be like understanding that business Acumen right A lot of people that I've met um and even in speaking

5:22 over the last year two years at um digital marketing conferences I find

5:28 that there are some just absolute intelligent people but a lot of them lack like basic business sense right

5:36 knowing what their floor is Right knowing what Break Even points or profitability margins things like that

5:42 and I see a lot of people that tend to race to the bottom of like hey we have the cheapest or we have you know this is

5:48 our unique selling proposition this is our uh you know offer without fully knowing like what are the what are the

5:56 financial implications or what are the business implications of making those kinds of decisions right we could all we

6:02 could all say that hey you know the first next 10 people get 50% off but 50%

6:09 off on those people I've now got to do twice as much volume potentially to even break even or in a lot of cases it's

6:16 it's actually more than twice as much because you have the sunk cost of advertising marketing all of that so

6:22 it's not just a what's the money coming in you have to consider all of those other elements that that actually are

6:28 part of the marketing right right right let's talk about SE

Importance of Testing in SEO

6:33 strategies and testing a bit of course love doing testings and automation so we're going to dive deep into that sure

6:40 as so why do you believe testing is crucial in SEO and can you share some Innovative testing methods you have used

6:48 yeah so if you're not testing you're really doing your clients a disservice and the reason is is that we're it's

6:54 constantly changing and so just for for clarity like I don't

7:00 believe that you should ever do stuff directly to a client if it's not like if you're not actually testing and

7:06 understanding what works and what doesn't I find it a little bit unethical to do that to a client even if you're

7:12 even if you're talking like white hat very you know content strategies because you know you could you could potentially

7:17 do a Content strategy that ends up backfiring right guest posting for

7:22 example for a long time that was you know guest posting and doing things like that it was a well Google's okay with it

7:29 until predom the until your backing profile predominantly shows guest posting and they're like actually don't

7:36 really like that so much right it's not natural it's not journalistic in nature because now you're just paying for

7:42 placement and so that's you know enter the you know real equals ugc real equals

7:47 sponsored that Google had to start clamping down on that and now that that goes from a very white hat you know

7:53 which everyone was like raving about like oh you know guest posts are great they still are a great way to move the needle but now it goes from a white hat

8:00 to a maybe it's a gray hat area that Google doesn't really care for per se

8:06 and so I think that that's one of the things that when you're testing you do need to be aware of and you know even when we're looking at things like real

8:13 equals ugc real equals sponsored those kinds of things does it really matter

8:18 right and so those are the kinds of things that you know if you're testing and actually digging deep into you're

8:24 going to understand with a lot more clarity about what's actually working and what's actually not the methodology

8:32 so the second P part of your question the methodology behind that is I it just shocks me to see how many seos

8:41 don't actually have a test website personally we have a a handful of them can't go into too many details about

8:47 that obviously because they are test sites and and you know they we do keep that pretty guarded but I mean it just

8:54 shocks me to to see how so many people are working in SEO and they're saying hey you know this this works and this

9:00 but they don't have an actual test site that they can try to burn it to the ground right see what actually works and

9:08 what you know if we're told you have to put this on your website if you have to

9:13 do something like do you actually have to do it or is it best practice or what's the actual effect of not doing it

9:20 right so understanding that you have these test sites that you can actually push the limit on see what works what

9:26 doesn't what's actively working and yeah like that kind of R&D is really really important to stay on top of your

9:32 game okay now now how do you conduct SEO testing is what are the most important

Conducting SEO Testing Methods

9:38 metrics you focus on I'm sure they were different maybe couple of years back

9:43 they changed now so yeah a couple things that I look at I used to do a lot of single variable unfortunately single

9:50 variable doesn't work in today's environment because single variable will

9:56 start to tell you whether whether or not there's like an like some can potentially move it but from there what

10:02 I tend to look at is let's actually put it into the wild and see because as you

10:07 and I both know like there are more than one ways to get to the get to the top of search engines right it could be a

10:13 backlink play it could be content play it could be CTR in traffic right right

10:20 there's a lot of different ways that you can get there and understanding what's the most effective minimum viable

10:26 methodology versus having to you know just do just do content and content and content you know without any backlinks

10:34 like that's a whole different strategy and and you have to play that differently than than you would if it

10:40 was uh content and backlinks or content and PR or ads or things like that so for

10:47 for me we'll initially start with saying if we are running like a single variable does it even work but then we actually

10:54 have to go through a secondary methodology where it's let's actually take a look at what's working and then

11:00 when we put it actually into a live environment where we can test it on some

11:05 of these some of these test sites that we have does it actually work still at that point or are we dealing with

11:12 something that works in a vacuum but then once you release it into a live environment it falls on its

11:19 face okay so so what are the biggest challenges you face while testing SE

Challenges in SEO Strategy Testing

11:24 strategy I know one you said is of course it works in vacuum but it falls otherwise and but are there other challenges you

11:31 face and how do you actually go about overcoming them or making those tests successful so the biggest thing right

11:38 now that I'm seeing with a lot of stuff is brand and if you're not branded um and this is this is an issue

11:44 that I've seen with hcu and a lot of things like that but if you're not branded Google doesn't really take you

11:50 seriously and so that's probably the biggest challenge is like even with a test site how do we build brand around

11:57 something right that doesn't possibly exist and so that that's probably the biggest challenge that I see there are

12:03 different ways you can go about doing it and a lot of it really comes down to you know treat it like an actual website you

12:09 know I I've I've seen guys that you know try and spin up test websites and again

12:14 without brand it's going to kind of fall on its face but if you're if you actually have some branded signals if

12:20 you actually treat it like a business would which goes again into time and money if you treat it as a brand you're

12:28 going to get a lot better results and you're it's going to be a more accurate depiction of what you you can expect

12:34 online okay so so the most common question which we come across how do you

Building Brand Authority with Google

12:39 when you are starting a business how do you build a brand in the eyes of Google so do you come across these

12:46 situations where a new client who is like just launched his business and now whatever you and me say eventually he's

12:53 not a brand so that means will those new businesses never win in Google no

12:58 absolutely not and so the the they can win in Google the thing is is that they

13:04 need to they they need to establish who they are what they do and where they do it and

13:10 that's that's a quote from you know a friend of mine Mike Marino he always is like brand brand brand right who you are

13:15 what you do where you do it and those are if you can satisfy those kinds of things you can actually be seen as a

13:21 legitimate brand in the eyes of Google right even if you are I mean take for example a local business right your your

13:28 your gym Plumbing that you know so who you are you know what do you do well we provide plumbing services and where do

13:35 you do it you know Chicago Illinois right right so now you've satisfied all of those things and you can start

13:41 building upon that at a local level if we're talking National you know we're

13:46 Pepsi Co or the PepsiCo company right so what do you do we're we're Pepsi what do you do you know what do what service do

13:52 you provide uh Beverages and soft drinks right where do you do it globally right

14:00 so a lot of people think that like it's a really difficult challenge to go from

14:05 like local or is it national or whatever location is relative right are you are

14:11 you local to your city your neighborhood country right the Milky Way galaxy right

14:19 we talk together Stellar right but it's all relative so understanding and kind of painting that picture for Google on

14:26 who you are what you do where you do it and understanding how brand fits into that that's a really important factor

14:32 and that's kind of how we tend to approach it I would also add to that typically if we're starting from Ground

14:37 Zero with a client that's where I want to look at you know how brandable is the name if it's something that's super

14:45 common that we're going to be you know let's say I had a product called you know Amazon streaming right good luck

14:52 trying to rank that it's not going to happen because you have conflicting

14:57 brands with someone like Amazon Amazon Amazon which you're going to go up against and you're never going

15:04 to outperform that so from a strategy perspective that's where I I would tend to look at how brandable is the name is

15:12 it something that we can potentially look at and think of contingency planning right if we were to to call the

15:19 business you know nv's SEO company well if you ever step out of

15:24 that well that starts to feel a little bit weird now right where your brand page traffic that makes a lot of sense

15:30 because either with you or without you involved in it it's still brandable you

15:36 can switch things out very easily but again it's all about the brand right now

Insights from Recent SEO Tests

15:42 can you share some insights from your recent SEO test that led to significant

15:48 client yeah so one of them that we recently did again with brand is that um we ended up having close to a 400%

15:57 increase in traffic within six mon wow and a lot of it was just who they are

16:02 what they do where they do it and um this was in you know this was in a larger metro area but a lot of it came

16:08 down to understanding those found you know foundational components Obviously good onpage SEO off-page signals we did

16:16 a lot of social a lot of people sleep on social but having all of these signals kind of

16:22 combined together you're going to get a considerably better result than you

16:28 would with just just doing on page or just doing off page just doing ads right

16:34 having these combined signals you you can amplify what you're doing right

16:39 right right now also I'm sure these are just brand signals but are there some

16:45 effective link uh building techniques you have found successful over the years which still works ads ads are ads are

16:51 really important um if you're an SEO company and you're not at least doing branded ads for your for your client

16:57 that's a huge Miss like you have to even if it's even if it's just very small

17:03 amounts of AD budget you have to be doing that um there's other kinds of Link building that we've done we've done everything from like I saying guest

17:10 posting content I'm a big fan of creating my own content and creating linkable assets so whether that's um

17:19 whether that's PDFs documents um spreadsheets um you know Google Business

17:25 posts things like that where we're able to actually go in and create the content

17:31 and create linkable assets that then we can share out to other places share out to additional people I'm a big fan of

17:37 syndication so syndication and automation right I I don't think that that's any secret to anyone I I use that

17:44 I I use a lot of stacking methods a lot of those tend to be they tend to be very effective because you you're building an

17:49 asset that then people can link out to and it's it's good for PR brand kits

17:55 that's another thing that we've we've done for a lot of really successful link building we'll do a brand kit put that

18:00 on the web page it also becomes an entity hub for people to link to and for journalists right okay now now of course

Adapting to Google Algorithm Updates

18:08 there's been too many algorithm changes so in Google in recent year of course how do you adapt to constant algorithm

18:15 changes and how should others do the same to maintain their rankings I actually don't worry about algorithm

18:21 updates believe it or not I I I don't the thing that we tend to look at is

18:27 because we're doing all of the things at a foundational level we're already doing stuff that Google likes right we're creating content we're establishing

18:34 brand we're establishing brand Authority and when content comes out we're just not we're not trying to

18:40 exploit any single tactic we're using all of these methods all of the tactics

18:47 do all the things and based on that we really

18:52 haven't had to to worry about a lot of algorithm updates okay and uh so let's talk a

Advantages of SEO Process Automation

18:59 little bit automation of course how does SEO process automation benefits agencies

19:05 and clients and can you share some examples from successful examples from your work yeah so one of the biggest

19:12 things that I would say for automation right now is uh social amplification of any of your content right so if you have

19:19 a Blog you can automate sending out that blog to and this is where syndication and things like that come in right but

19:26 you can take any of that content you can Syndicate it out to your various

19:32 platforms and there's a lot of tools I mean make is probably one of my favorites right now just because I like the visual aesthetic of it it it's

19:39 unlike a lot of other ones like zapier or pavy or some of these others make will actually tell you where your

19:46 automation has failed so if let's say you're going from a Blog to reposting it

19:51 out to Facebook or Instagram or anything like that a lot of times a zapier it'll just say hey it didn't it didn't work or

19:58 it failed whereas make becomes very visual like on the particular node it'll tell you this is where the problem

20:05 exists and this is why it failed and what's going on so you can troubleshoot things a lot more visually rather than

20:11 just having to dig through a lot of the code but social is probably one of the biggest things that we automate almost

20:17 all of because if we have a Blog we want to amplify that and we're going to do that through social signals I think AI has also helped that

20:25 quite a bit when it comes to automation I was just at a event in Chicago and one

20:30 of the things that we talked about was artificial intelligence and the way that you can leverage I think right yeah yeah

20:38 and so that was that that was a that was a lot of fun but using AI to enhance

20:44 what you're currently doing and if you're in using AI if if

20:51 you're if you're using it to shortcut a lot of the actual content creation the

20:56 research things like that it allows you to then humanize that I'm not an advocate for just like push button AI

21:02 where you you push it and then just post like crazy you still need to have that human edit that human touch just to make

21:08 sure like as with AI as with any AI like sometimes it goes off guard rails and

21:15 you're like whoa whoa let's Wrangle it back in let's let's get you back into the what we actually want you to do but

21:21 it allows you to shortcut and at the end of the day become more profitable as an

21:26 agency versus spending all of your time on the grunt work that you don't necessarily need to be involved with it

21:32 also allows you to have deeper and richer uh client interactions or potentially scale

21:39 operations okay and what are your favorite tools for automating SEO

Role of Automation in SEO

21:45 processes so SEO processes a lot of ours we initially start with a video so I'll

21:51 actually physically do the process we I I will record myself doing it and then

21:56 what we'll do is we'll take it into again make or any of those kind of things and then start doing a a process

22:02 map or a mind map on Step One is this step two is this step three is this we

22:08 map that out and then we uh we kind of release it out to the automation okay and in what way is AI

Impact of AI on SEO

22:16 transforming Su and how are you incorporating into your strategies and automation as well AI has transformed

22:25 everything that we do one of the things I'll actually be speaking in two weeks in Las Vegas for SEO rockstars and one

22:32 of the things I'll be going over is how I use Google Sheets to automate that we've actually pulled in open Ai and

22:38 Google Gemini into um some of our sheets claw perplexity as well and what we're doing is we're creating content and

22:45 scheduling it at scale and so you can you can use this for a variety of

22:50 different techniques tactics things like that but AI has changed the way that we do stuff by cutting down our like

22:57 improving overall output by at least tfold while at the same time reducing

23:04 our overall overhead and need to be involved probably inversely by at least

23:10 tfold so we can get more done less work it's just everything that we're doing is

23:16 enhanced through AI okay I mean how do you leverage AI to

23:21 enhance content strategies from creation to optimization or you just run a prompt and boom so we've done a variety of

23:29 different things as far as like and it all does come down to the prompt right if you have a good prompt you're going to get decent output I think the problem

23:37 that I see with a lot of people is just lacking the knowledge of what works with a prompt um maintain you know having a

23:44 prompt that you're actually defining the voice that you're looking for the overall purpose that you're looking for

23:50 we do a lot of stuff with that like takes the voice of say Dan Kennedy or Russell Brunson or these guys that are

23:56 really good copywriters another one of my favorite is Mike mallwitz right you can take a lot of those kinds of voice

24:02 and instead of just saying write me you know write me 25 social posts about digital marketing right you can say

24:09 write it in the tone of Dan Kennedy or write it in the the tone of Mike mallwitz or Donald Miller Story brand

24:16 right the these guys that are really humaniz humanizing the way that things work or the the approach to content and

24:23 you're going to get a much better output than you would just by saying give me Facebook posts right so I think that a

24:29 lot of it does come down to the way that your prompts are set up and if you put in garbage you're going

24:35 to get out garbage if you put in a decent prompt you're going to get fantastic results right right right now

Effective Link Building Strategies

24:42 so let's talk a little bit about Advanced Su strategy I know you almost what you do is Advanced but still so

24:49 what are some of the effective Link Link building strategies uh you have used and how do you measure their

24:56 success so there there are some link building strategies that I can talk about and

25:02 some that that I'm I'll say We'll bypass a little bit just because they are more aggressive um but you know content

25:10 content and content Assets in general are probably one of the most important link building

25:18 components that you can do again like a lot of the stuff that we do it's we build a lot of our own links we don't

25:24 necessarily do Outreach I I don't think I've done Outreach in okay along but

25:30 when we're building our assets what we do is we build linkable things or things that can be lead magnets a very practical example would be we use a tool

25:37 that helps us create ebooks right now who wouldn't want an ebook you know even

25:42 for a dollar is like a a tri uh lead magnet that gives you actionable tips to

25:48 optimize your Google business profile or to optimize your onpage strategies right

25:54 these are all things that are that are great assets and within the PDF of course we're going to link back to maybe

25:59 potential blogs that we have or our YouTube Channel showing you know here's

26:04 different strategies on how to leverage this it's all content that we're creating but we're strategically

26:10 interlinking this so it builds up not just our website but our social content

26:16 content within you know our entire brand and that asset can be leveraged in a

26:22 variety of ways again I can use it as a lead Magnet or trip wire we can use it for backlinking purposes

26:28 I can build more backlinks to it right you know depending on what I'm looking at and I can you know if I have V2 of

26:35 the book or V3 or something else I can I can do that we can also leverage email

26:41 marketing with that as well and obtain backlinks through that method there's a lot of different things that that when

26:47 you think creatively and outside of the box there's a lot of different things that you can do so okay right as far as

26:55 the advanced stuff right you gota definitely hit me up at one of the one of these events and that's again the

27:01 beauty of going to events like say you and I met out in Myrtle Beach at legit live those kind of events there's a lot

27:08 of other things that sitting around talking with people you're going to get different tips and insights into

27:14 different ways that people may or may not feel comfortable necessarily like just broadcasting out there but it's

27:20 going to be kind of the you know conversations at the bar that hey I'm

27:25 I'm testing this you might want to look into that so right right right I hear you

EAT Factor in SEO Practices

27:31 right okay now now how important is E8 which is of course experience expertise

27:37 authoress and trustworthiness uh factor in current Su practices and how do you

27:43 optimize for it so for us when we're looking at eat it all comes back to Brand right and

27:50 how how closely is your brand aligned with you know and you'll hear I'm sure that anyone that runs a summary on this

27:57 use a summaries right guys but anyone that's going to run a summary on this you're going to hear brand brand brand brand brand and that's absolutely huge I

28:05 know several people and the guys that are actually crushing it in the industry right now they're doing this and they're

28:11 they're looking at those kinds of signals so when it comes to eat one of the things that we look at is how well

28:16 is your brand known how well is it established are you taking up all of those entity buckets are you being seen

28:22 in sge or AI summaries and the way that we tend to do this is number one just

28:28 good SEO right good on page you have to have that you've also got to have good you've got to have a decent backlink

28:34 profile you have to be seen as legitimate and Authority authoritative in the um in the space one of the

28:40 easiest ways that we're seeing eat work well for people is just staying on topic

28:46 so one of our strategies and a very actionable one I've talked at at a couple conferences recently is we use a

28:52 five bucket system okay and so the way that we do this is there are five things

28:58 that Define what a business you know what they do products Services things like that and so we tend to focus on

29:06 those five things and then build continuous content around that so you know for for example

29:14 my agency we do website design and development we do search engine optimization we do paid media placement

29:21 like PPC is such a dirty word people don't like using it so search engine marketing or sem right we'll call it

29:27 that um we do Cy security and then we also work with like brand strategy so out of all of those particular

29:34 components one of the what we'll do is we'll rotate through each one of them so we might talk about brand strategy in

29:40 one blog and then we're going to go to maybe our s SEO talking about you know

29:47 how SEO can relate to Brand strategy we're going to talk about website design and development we would have a six in

29:53 there social media you know online marketing and brand strategy things like that but then we would talk about

29:58 potentially the implications of securing your website and having things that are possibly watermarked or things like that

30:05 right so we're going to rotate through each one of those five topics and so it

30:10 helps establish brand Authority and brand trust because we have everything siloed and we're continuing to hit these

30:17 topics over and over in all honesty that's how that's how you build a lot of eat is you you write about particular

30:24 topics and write more extensively about those topics than any the competition okay now what are your your

Click-Through Rate Manipulation

30:32 best practices for improving click through rate CTR or search engines and do you believe in CTR

30:39 manipulation I was gonna I was gonna say that the last part of that that that's a little bit of a baed question there CTR

30:45 works it does matter now depending on CTR manipulation you can go through

30:51 automated means and methods 100% that works Google's gotten a lot smarter

30:56 about it though so where a lot of people people fail with it is um not

31:01 understanding the Nuance of CTR manipulation let's be honest though you

31:06 could do it a legitimate way and do it via ads and this is why previously I mentioned you know if you're not running

31:12 ads you're kind of a disservice because ads are a fantastic way to increase CTR

31:19 in very like in very effective CTR right you can control Geographic specificity on it you can control your

31:27 target mark Market there a lot of other things that you can really dig into and

31:33 if you're doing it correctly it's funny because I know I'm sure you've heard this as well that like ads don't affect

31:38 SEO right and I would say directly they don't like just because you're running

31:44 ads doesn't mean that you're gonna have better SEO however and this is where it gets into a little bit of a nuanced

31:51 response the byproduct of someone clicking through to your website from an ad and how of often in periodic that

31:59 happens and how they're engaging with your website without question I've seen that

32:07 effect the way that the way that your website is uh seen and how it ranks LSA ads point in case with that like I I've

32:14 seen local businesses that run LSA ads they get good traction on it you know they're they're doing everything that

32:20 they need to from a good ad strategy standpoint like it's everything that I would see through a manipulated CTR like

32:27 bot traffic but legitimately right and so at 100% like I I see very

32:34 very strong correlation between like running ads and improved traffic and

32:40 improved um overall SEO and rankings okay that's that's a different

32:46 Outlook I mean a lot of people not talk about this but I completely agree with the theory yes it's interesting because

32:52 again like if if you're running ads you're increasing those signals to the website and there's absolutely no reason

32:59 why you know you wouldn't see like improved rankings through stuff like that so right right it's

33:06 engagement yes CTR is engagement right now now let's talk a little bit about

Current SEO Trends and Challenges

33:11 current trends and challenges in SEO as we look at 2024 what are some key trends

33:16 in SEO that agency should be aware of which will carry life yeah one of the

33:23 biggest things that I see probably the biggest challenge for any agency right now is the commoditization of SEO

33:32 right and because of AI and because hold for a sick power just I was gonna say no

33:39 you're going black hat now right we are going dark on it so you were saying is

33:45 commoditized right well I think that SEO in general is being commoditized and because I mean even seeing these AI kind

33:52 of optimization tools where it's like we're going to optimize everything for you everyone's looking for push button they're looking at reducing cost they're

33:59 looking at trying to reduce overall effort right and so I think the issue

34:05 for a lot of agencies is going to be defining who they are and their position within the market right I think that's

34:13 going to be a big challenge I think the other big challenge is that I'm seeing Google's kind of at a at a stress point

34:19 at this point at right now right they they're having a tough time indexing stuff one of the things that again not a

34:25 lot of people are talking about but something I find really interesting is that they're trying to offload as much

34:31 as they possibly can one of the conferences I was I'd spoken at recently they were talking about the actual cost

34:38 for Google to operate its uh search engine functions right and you're talking in the billions of

34:44 dollars for it to just operate right keep the lights on and you know just

34:51 function day-to-day businesses as usual and from a business owner standpoint that's a big Bill to pay and

34:58 understand I mean so it makes sense why they would prioritize things like monetization their ad Revenue things

35:04 like that because hey that's what makes the money free search does nothing for them right organic does nothing so when

35:10 you look at it through that lens I think that it shifts the perspective of what

35:16 Google is and why it functions the way it does understanding that they're a for-profit business they have

35:22 shareholders that they have to you know answer to at the end of the day and having a price tag that come you know or

35:29 an annual bill that comes in the billions of dollars like I don't think that most people can even

35:34 fathom having an expense like that right right and so I think that's that's the

35:40 other thing that you know with Google The Challenge is okay you know they've offloaded all of their cash into um

35:46 archive.org or the the Wayback machine right Google's not even going to handle cash anymore because it's too expensive

35:53 hey we can cut costs where we can I'm also seeing interesting things going on with again social and the verifications

36:00 that are involved with social right it elevates your level of trust so if you have your blue check

36:07 marks again you're going to have to pay for pay for these kinds of things but that elevates a level of trust

36:15 where you may not have had that before right it establishes that yes there is

36:20 an actual person behind this it's not just some you know fake profile that gets spun up has zero trust signal in it

36:28 you're actually yes there's a person behind this particular profile and you can corroborate that with online like

36:33 offline signals as well so I think that that that for me is probably another big thing that I would look at um from an

36:40 agency standpoint is understanding that Google is very utilitarian and they're not going to do

36:46 something that doesn't have use case or make sense financially for them I I see

36:52 this as a you know in a lot of cases especially with um several agencies I worked with over the past they're like

36:59 well Google should help us out and it's like Google doesn't care they really don't really what they care about is is

37:06 it profitable for us and just as just as like I was saying as a business owner myself or as you if if you were losing

37:14 money on a particular Venture you'd probably stop that Venture as much as you possibly can the only reason why

37:20 Google doesn't turn off search is because of the data that they can mine or harvest off of that yeah in which in

37:28 turn they can sell more ads and they can monetize more effectively and they can

37:34 get their cut at the end of the day and so I think that that's a really a really important thing for agencies and seos in

37:41 general to understand is that you have to think through like how does this

37:47 relate to Google's overall profitability and if it doesn't add to their bottom line they're probably not

37:53 going to do it I agree for most part of it of course

37:58 it's end of the day it's Google it's just profit which profitability which

38:03 they look more rather their business I mean and you can't fault them for that right like they they're they're in

38:08 business to make money just like the rest of us I I don't see it as a like they're going to do something benevolent

38:14 or altruistic to just out of the goodness of their heart like there's purpose behind everything that they do

38:20 and that purpose at the end of the day is to stay in business and be you know the dominant search engine on the market

38:28 right so and make money right of course so let's talk a little little bit about

Generating Leads for Your Agency

38:34 client management and agency growth what are your most effective methods for generating leads in the digital

38:40 marketing space so with digital marketing again it comes down to the assets that you're

38:46 creating promotion of those assets I'm a I'm a big fan of the parto principles so 8020 Rule and in my opinion you know 80%

38:53 of it should come down to the promotion of your assets whereas 20% is really the creation of them so I've seen guys that

39:01 are mediocre at best and I'm sure we see this all all the time in Facebook right

39:06 you get the nothing against young kids but it's really really hard for me to take someone seriously where they're

39:11 like you know I'm 18 year old I'm 18 years old or I'm 21 years old I'm

39:16 crushing it I'm a multi-millionaire and there are those guys out there but the reason is is because they're actually

39:22 out there being social putting their name out there and you know I I've seen the

39:28 same thing with like um a lot of these uh private groups be it's School Circle

39:33 Discord all of these kinds of things where these guys are like hey come into my group and it's 20 bucks a month 100 bucks a month anything like that they're

39:40 making thousands on these things and to be quite Frank a lot of them have either

39:46 just gone through maybe a course and been like okay well I'm going to adapt this a lot of them goes to back to you

39:51 know maybe some of like you know Dan Kennedy or you know Alex Heros stuff like this this where these guys are like

39:58 they have great concept these kids learn some of this stuff and then they're actually out there promoting it do these

40:04 kids actually know anything about running a multi-million dollar agency probably not but they're able to go out there and

40:11 they're able to promote themselves and carry themselves as like hey look we've done this I do have to laugh a little

40:17 bit I'll be honest with a lot of these with a lot of the social like hey I've made all this money kind of stuff A lot

40:23 of times what I see is I write I make a course say that I making all this money

40:28 you pay me to make a lot of money and then I brag about how I made all the money right and so it's kind of this

40:34 weird cyclical kind of a thing that's like but you made the money off of bragging about how you had money right

40:41 you may or may not have had made a course and now you actually have the money so which one comes first the

40:46 chicken or the egg right to me that that's probably the biggest thing from agency growth is just being out there again like little bit of a tangent there

40:54 but if you're not out there actively pursuing marketing you're going to get passed by

40:59 guys that do okay so all right and and what strategies

Scaling a Small Digital Marketing Agency

41:07 have you find effective for scaling a small digital marketing agencies scaling

41:13 small digital marketing agencies so one of the things that I would recommend for small digital marketing agencies and

41:20 especially if you're bootstrapped on cash is you can Niche down obviously

41:26 niching down is going to be a really effective method to scale out I would

41:31 caution be very careful about not taking on too many clients in a particular area

41:37 because that can start getting into some ethical concerns if you're trying to rank more than one person in a

41:44 especially a very small market for a spefic specific vertical however if you

41:50 get known as the guy that does HVAC contractors or Roofing clients in your

41:56 area you can build an entire brand based on that like we're the we're the roofing guy or we're the HVAC guy or we're the

42:05 MedSpa guy right that's a really effective way for smaller agencies to scale out at some point though the the

42:12 caution I would have with that is that if you're only niched down into a single

42:18 vertical when things like Co happened I knew several guys that were just doing Med spas or just doing dentists or you

42:27 know lasic type doctors and things like that and they absolutely got destroyed

42:32 when covid happened you need to think through what that diversity looks like to a certain extent because if you are

42:40 niched down yes it is easy to scale but that can also be taken away overnight

42:45 with something like covid right right okay so that's a good advice nich

42:52 down but not to something very specific of course yeah down to Niche down but

42:58 maybe have a couple niches right and again if we're talking like Med Spa you could have things like you know massage

43:05 and then possibly even like MedSpa you know products online you're not stepping

43:10 outside of that Niche so drastically that you're doing like MedSpa and then like fintech right very very different

43:17 markets right right right but if you're doing MedSpa and MedSpa products or healthc care products maybe you're doing

43:24 like Ecom and then you have like a more of a trory local site that can really help out and

43:30 potentially you can also you know cross link like if you're if you're creating good content and this is

43:36 where so a lot of people get really freaked out about um things like pbn

43:42 we're going to go off on a little unscripted here but we'll talk a little bit about this a lot of people get

43:48 really weirded out about things like pbn what's interesting in my opin in my

43:53 experience is that a lot of these guys that are doing like guest post placement or strategic placement be it what

43:59 whatever you want to call it Niche edits guest posting sponsored placement any of this stuff they actually own the website

44:07 and so I've talked with several even link building agencies that are like we have what's the word that they use

44:13 inventory right our inventory is grown we have these strategic you know partners that allow us to you know we

44:20 can talk to and it's like hey I need we need we have a med spa company or we have an HVAC company you know what can

44:26 page one traffic do for us right and so what's interesting with that is a lot of a lot of these companies that have those

44:32 kinds of like inventory or that can do this kind of Outreach they either have

44:37 the site or they have connections to a site owner now the difference between a a crappy pbn that's just used for link

44:45 building or a Web Master is the care that the care and effort that you put

44:51 into the website you could 100% own 500 websites and if you didn't care about

44:57 them you're just spinning them up for backlinks you're going to get labeled did my camera just die yes my goodness let's I don't know

45:06 what happened there let's you are back okay so as soon as I start talking about

45:13 pbn's and stuff yeah like I'm surprised the mute button didn't come on but so

45:18 the thing is is that you could have 500 websites and if you're just spinning them up for the purposes of like link

45:24 building you're going to get labeled as a pbn dirty spammer right if you had 500 websites and they're actual like you

45:31 actually took a little bit of time to curate content create the content make them look good you're no longer a dirty

45:38 spammer you're a Web Master you just happen to own 500 websites that you know

45:43 if one of your clients then wanted to go in and and write content or needed placement on these things using the idea

45:49 of a med spa and then also like maybe uh health care products or maybe uh you

45:55 know gut health products or like that you can place that on these other websites it just you know do it with

46:03 caution and don't do it you know obviously don't go out there and just like saying hey this is my entire

46:09 network of websites right but at the end of the day any most of these guys that are selling links that's exactly what

46:15 their strategy is they just happen to own a lot of websites that then if you

46:20 know when you're doing guest posting it's like okay yeah well you can pay me and I'll put it on one of the hundreds

46:26 of websites that I own right which at the end of the day like if you really want to boil it down to it is a

46:32 pbn or you know maybe not a private blog network but a public blog Network or

46:37 inventory as we're calling it right so I think that that's that's just a really important thing for a lot of people to

46:43 understand and again why we don't typically pay for links or we don't like do Outreach or any of that we actually

46:50 will go out and we actually build our own links that's how exactly we also do

46:55 because I think honestly what you says is a it's a public pbn it's a private pbn that's the only difference you don't

47:00 know at least the one you have you have better control and quality and everything right absolutely and and I

47:06 think that that's that at the end of the day I think that's even what Google looks at I did a link analysis on a

47:12 company that had posted some stuff on like Forbes or you know Inc or some of these other really big types of sites

47:19 and what was interesting um is when I actually started looking at the uh the backlink analysis for these kinds of

47:25 things it was very interesting to see that kind of like very similar type of pattern that I would see with just like

47:31 your typical syndication pushing it out to other blogs that you may or may not have control of like you probably do

47:37 have control of but then picking it up and because you'll see these sites that are like oh we're just going to put like

47:44 a single paragraph excerpt by the way if you want to read this go back to you know to said

47:49 website and it it's it's all about that control right

47:55 and being if you have quality standards in place again you're a Web Master

48:00 you're not a dirty pbn spammer right right right right right now now what's

In-House SEO vs Outsourcing Services

48:07 your take on in-house SEO team versus Outsourcing SE services so we use

48:13 both um my in-house team is about five people and we white label for um several

48:18 other agencies do a lot we do a lot of other stuff my in-house team is only

48:24 about five people and it's it's pretty lean team but each one of them is an

48:29 expert in their own right so we do that and then as we need to scale or as we

48:35 need additional things I may go to things like legit or I may go and

48:41 Outsource particular components of It ultimately at the end of the day that

48:46 does come into our quality control standards and if a subcontractor or any

48:51 kind of outsourced deliverable does not meet our quality standards ultimately that comes back to us right and so at

48:59 the end of the day I don't see any issue with Outsourcing stuff as long as quality control measures are in place

49:07 right and that you're not just Outsourcing it to Outsource it right if you if you have those quality

49:13 metrics in in place and you can you can establish like this is what our metrics are if it doesn't meet that standard

49:18 it's rejected and not good and then again obviously like if you're testing out any kind of Outsourcing don't do it

49:25 immediately on a client site right this go again goes back into those test sites

49:31 that you may have if if you're testing someone out that's an outsourcer put them on one of your test sites see what they can do with that because again

49:38 you're not dealing with client stuff that could mean the make the difference between them putting food on their

49:44 family's table or you know like shutting down right so that's that's one of my

49:51 pieces of advice for any agency is like okay test test your outsourcers before you actually put them on active Projects

49:57 please absolutely and what strategies have been effective for you in attracting and especially retaining

Client Attraction and Retention Strategies

50:04 clients so the biggest thing is setting expectations and I think that that's where a lot of agencies when they do

50:10 have a high churn they there's a lack of expectation setting for their clients so

50:16 what ends up happening is they they'll promise the world or their sales team will promise the world and then when it actually comes to deliverables that's

50:24 lackluster and that that's where they fall short I think that establishing realistic goals and

50:31 expectations are absolutely critical to the success and retention of

50:37 clients okay and how can agencies differentiate themselves in such a

Differentiating Agencies in a Crowded Market

50:42 crowded Market I know you said nich down but are there any other ways also to differentiate yeah I think that a lot of it comes down to your creativity right if you're offering the same thing I'm

50:53 I'm also a big fan of blue ocean strategies right if you're doing everything that everyone else is doing

51:00 it's going to be really tough to stick out in in front of of your target market or tar target audience if you have

51:07 something that's disruptive you're going to stick out a lot more and it doesn't necessarily need to be controversial but

51:13 this is where I I think that having you know a particular having a particular Market

51:19 strategy or voice within the market really really is effective there was a

51:25 online webinar I attended recently that I thought they they put this really really eloquently but basically what it was is

51:32 like even if you look at you know different different superheroes or

51:37 different people like that right there's there's different approaches to say Batman versus Superman right okay

51:45 they're both superheroes but their approach in how they do things is vastly

51:51 different right and understanding that that I think you know is where agency if

51:56 they really want to stand out establishing who you are and that that goes back into the who you are what you

52:02 do where you do it right but what's your brand voice are you you know Superman who's all about you know freedom and and

52:10 that kind of stuff or are you about Batman who's going to solve your problems with your fists right I mean

52:15 again they're they're they're both superheroes but they handle things in a very different manner that um you know

52:22 that that that can separate you from your competition quite dramatically and it's it's

52:29 nuanced but it's it's just it will help craft your voice as an

52:34 agency okay and uh so for those just starting out in SEO with limited

Starting Out in SEO with Limited Resources

52:40 resources what advice would you give the advice that I would give is

52:46 learn as much as you can don't be afraid to fail and again fail in a very safe

52:51 place don't do it on clients please for the love of God don't do it on clients

52:57 have a test site I mean a test site is going to cost you a little bit of money well not not even that I mean you could

53:03 even fire up a Google site you could fire up a free Weebly or Wix site learn

53:08 your Basics on that try and rank something and I see a lot of guys that are that just want to immediately jump

53:13 into let's get paid on stuff and that's great that's effective but like if you

53:19 don't know what you're doing you're GNA have to start somewhere just watching you know videos on stuff watching

53:25 YouTube University right those kinds of things that'll get you so far but without practical

53:32 application you're going to be very limited so that would be my advice like fire up a Google site fire up a free

53:39 Weebly or Wix or anything like that try and rank it right you are going to run

53:44 into some significant challenges right without having an actual domain without having something that right is seen as a

53:51 bit more legitimate you will run into challenges however you're going to learn a lot in that process

53:57 the other thing that I would also recommend is don't be afraid of these labels like necessarily white hat black

54:04 hat you know purple hat whatever understand what they are and understand that it's about risk and at the end of

54:10 the day I think that's what it is I have some pretty unpopular opinions about some of this stuff but at the end of the

54:17 day I think what matters is that you can do something in is it highrisk high

54:22 reward lowrisk High reward highrisk High reward or you know you know highrisk low

54:30 reward okay you want to understand like what what of each of these things you know whatever the tactic is that you're

54:36 doing CTR manipulation can be super super advantageous to

54:41 do but it's also a highrisk high reward thing if you screw it up you're going to

54:47 bury a website that's not something I necessarily would want to do to a client

54:52 right right now things like blogging relatively low risk medium to high risk

55:00 or medium to high reward we'll say so low risk medium to high reward depending

55:05 on what the blog is right depending on link building strategies it could be you know moderate risk to moderate to high

55:12 reward on right just depends and so I think that if you're just starting out

55:18 and you're bootstrapped on cash understanding what these things are and listen to both sides of things don't

55:24 get so entrenched and we we're we're all about this one strategy take in a bunch of strategies

55:31 then determine what makes sense for you

55:37 okay right I think that makes more sense rather than just trying to have just one

55:44 strategy and trying to copy some of the strategy I think it totally and what works for you and try to do multiple

55:50 test yeah absolutely and so the the thing that I the thing I tend to see though too is like

55:57 so my background initially when I came from it was from like after I did development and I actually did

56:02 reputation I still do a lot of reputation management but the thing is is that when people were just like oh

56:08 content is King and all you need is content that is true content does matter

56:14 however without links content is kind of like having that proverbial Lamborghini that all of us talk about in the SEO

56:20 industry right right it's like having the lambo in your front yard or in your driveway but no gas or no petroleum

56:27 right it's great you can take some awesome Instagram photos you can be like look at my content it's so awesome look

56:33 at this Lambo it's so awesome right but it's not going to go anywhere on the flip side of that if all you're doing is

56:38 link building then you have a big you know five gallon thing or you know big

56:45 container of gasoline but no car what could you do you could all do all kinds of stuff with I mean you could light it on fire you could do whatever right but

56:52 without something to actually use it with you just have gas

56:58 combine the two of them and now we're now we're driving down the road going pretty fast pretty far right but you

57:04 have to you have to understand that and that's I think where I see the biggest difference between like white and black

57:09 hat is like people will be like white hat you've got to just do content just do content but without link building you're not going to go anywhere the flip

57:15 side of it link Building without good content you're not gonna get the conversion you're not going to get the

57:21 traffic it's pointless effort because you'll have to do more link building you still don't get the traffic where it's

57:26 going to be pushing you know trying to push things in opposition of gravity and you're going to have to push

57:33 harder and harder and harder and you're still not going to get the results that you're looking for so it's got to be a

Future Direction of SEO and Digital Marketing

57:38 combination of both okay looking at what do you see the as the future direction

57:44 of SEO and digital marketing BEC again like as we mentioned

57:49 earlier um I think it it really will become it'll come down to being a brand strategist and building

57:56 the entire marketing funnel for clients not just focusing on SEO I think that

58:02 for SEO it's going to come down to more or less brand positioning because all of the good SEO tactics and techniques that

58:09 we use that's how you're going to get into SGE, it's how you get the rich snippets it's how you get a lot of these

58:14 other components that Google's putting in but so I think that that's where SEO

58:19 lies is that it's it's going to be in positioning these websites or

58:25 positioning these brands so that they do appear in those kinds of positions in things like SGE but let's not rely on

58:33 SEO to appear like in the 10 blue links that we have right it's all about positioning it so that you're somewhere

58:39 within that Google screen right I completely agree with you

58:45 now uh what final thought of key takeaways would you like to share with

58:50 our listeners so big key takeaway is don't be afraid you know test and don't be

58:57 afraid to fail right okay not absolutely and always think like a brand and don't

59:04 just stick to one specific niche be ready to diversify right right right don't be

Where to Find Brian Kato Online

59:11 afraid yes Brian it's been a pleasure having you on the show and thank you for sharing your insights and experience

59:17 with us before we wrap up where can our listeners follow your work or get in touch with you yeah so I'm pretty active

59:24 on Facebook you can follow me my um my handle and that is K a T.B R Ian so k.

59:31 Brian I used to be pretty active on Twitter not so much anymore but you can you can still follow me there I still

59:36 reply and do all of that on on message and that is KOB B so last name first

59:41 initial last name um and then also on Instagram or any like I said any of the meta platforms so those are typically

59:47 the best places to get in touch with me you can also check out my website which is Fusion vine.com you can also find me

59:54 on my personal website which is ryan.com so okay any one of those you're

1:00:01 good to go okay and thank you again Brian and thank you to our listeners for tuning in

Outro

1:00:07 don't forget to subscribe to the agency Insider podcast for more insightful conversations until next time thank you